Plucky Guy

Getting old sucks. It doesn’t help that I’m reminded every day of my life after I wake up in the morning. That’s because mirrors surround me. I know that’s a bad feng shui thing and now I can see why. We have those mirrored closet doors and a mirror running the length of our bathroom vanity.

The other morning while brushing my teeth, I looked up at the mirror and saw that I had a couple of gray hairs growing into my eyebrows. I don’t know why that bothered me as I have lots of gray on the top of my head as well as in my mustache and yes, my chest hairs.

I guess my eyebrows represented the last stand against aging, and when I saw gray I figured my youth was over. I tried plucking them out with my fingers but the hairs were too short. I scanned the vanity counter and spotted my wife’s eyebrow plucker. I figured, why not?

As soon as I started, our 12-year-old daughter walked into the room and exclaimed, “Oh, my God, Dad, are you plucking your eyebrows?” As though I was caught doing illegal drugs, I threw the plucker down and denied it. Of course she wasn’t buying it and called her mother into the room. Great.

My wife came running in thinking there was some kind of major catastrophe. When our daughter explained what she saw, I was pleasantly surprised that my wife defended me. She said, “Dad is a man’s man. He’s not going to pluck his eyebrows, wax them or do anything like that.”

She continued, “Besides if he was plucking gray hair out of his eyebrows, it’s probably because he wanted to look younger and attractive for all the women who are fans of his column. He really doesn’t need to do it because I find him attractive no matter what he looks like.”

Our daughter, now exiting, said, “Oh gross, get a room!” I gave my wife a kiss and as she left the room she said, “Hey, stay away from my leg shavers.”

Like many people, I was saddened at the passing of Gen. Fred Weyand. I had dinner with him years ago, and can tell you he left a definite impression on me. As he did with Don Chapman, who wrote the MidWeek 1997 cover story on him before we archived such things on our Web site. We’re running an encore in his honor. On the left under Editor’s Desk click on Classics.